Sourcebook Educational Guides: Winning Presentations
Conventional wisdom says: Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you've told them. This is good advice for the simple delivery of ideas and information. But to inspire confidence, spark initiative, and motivate action -- a flexible and interactive approach is usually best. For example, after you have discussed your goals at the beginning of a presentation, you can get your audience involved by offering them a choice of paths to reach those meeting objectives. Do they want to know the specific steps or tactics that you have in mind, or do they first need more background on a key concept, product, or resource?
You can maximize the impact and flexibility of your presentation by preparing simple branching sequences. These "branches" can each deliver a separate set of slides, one for every subject choice that you plan to offer your audience. PowerPoint, Astound, Corel Presentations, Macromedia Director, and other programs let you do this easily with "go to" buttons or bulleted menus. This kind of interactivity not only increases audience buy-in; it saves time and minimizes misunderstandings.
Get Them Moving
Do you want to excite and motivate your audience? If your answer is yes, don't bore them with a rigid, preprogrammed pitch with pictures of the factory, a detailed description of your entire product line, or the history of your vice president's beagle. How many times have you wished that a presenter would just get to the point or at least ask you what you wanted to know? Be prepared to answer questions, break off into an interactive brain-storming session, or an action-producing shirtsleeves meeting. And always be ready to close. How often have you seen a salesman talk himself past a chance to close the deal? Being flexible, attentive, and interactive is the best way to avoid burying your opportunities in a blizzard of extra slides.
Paradoxically, being very prepared, well rehearsed, and comfortable with your material and technology can make your presentations even more flexible and adaptable to your audience's needs. This not only reduces the boredom and fatigue level of your audience; it increases the odds of a win-win outcome. Your audience gets just-in-time information that they can use, while you get your points across and invoke the response called for in your presentation plan.
Interactive Tools
Any tool that can help you to increase managed interaction during a meeting can also help you achieve your presentation objectives. Whether you simply ask leading questions of a local audience or allow your remote participant to plug in "what if" numbers into your formulated spreadsheet, it creates a shared momentum toward your objectives. Web conferencing services, such as WebEx, PlaceWare, Accerra, and Connex, also provide many ways to involve distant colleagues and customers in the meeting process. Adding Web-based visuals to a conference call or pulling in remote participants via videoconferencing can add to the "importance" of a meeting and increase both audience focus and understanding.
Interactive whiteboards, such as the SmartBoard, offer another way to increase audience involvement. Whiteboards make it easy to keep a record of audience input and enable you to interact with on-screen information during your presentation. Portable units, such as the mimio Xi and eBeam System 3 (less than $800), even let you take this interactivity on the road. Both models use small modules that attach to an ordinary whiteboard, turning it into a powerful interactive tool.
Worth Ten Thousand Words
There's nothing wrong with using tried-and-tested presentation formats when appropriate. A standard template-driven, bullet-point slide show is often best for an ordinary meeting or a presentation to a more conservative client. But to inspire and motivate an audience, put more of your personal point of view into the structure and content of your presentations. To add emotional energy and direction to your presentation, you can use pictures, sound, and video; these are powerful tools of expression. Editing programs, such as iMovie 2 (Mac), Adobe Premier (Mac/Win), and Ulead MediaStudio Pro (Win), allow you to easily combine your digital photos, video clips, and favorite music into short, clear multimedia communication. After you create these scenes, they can easily be inserted into your slide show, either as auto-running movies or as button-activated "reserves" awaiting your command to launch video scenes.
Video clips should typically run less than one minute (to prevent mental fatigue), and it's a good idea to present them from the hard disk of a fast computer with plenty of RAM to ensure smooth running. Typically, a 600+ GHz CPU with at least 512MB of RAM will do fine. A powerful FireWire (IEEE 1394) laptop, such as the Sony Vaio GR390 or a Titanium G4 PowerBook, can function both as an editing/authoring station and as a portable playback device for smooth video and high-impact multimedia. If your desktop computer does not have a FireWire port, you can capture high-quality video from your camcorder using Pinnacle's Studio Deluxe multimedia editing package ($299). It includes a FireWire PCI AV capture card, pro-level editing software, and a "breakout box" for easy hookups. Belkin's cost-effective FireWire upgrade includes an F5U501 PCI card, a 6- to 4-pin FireWire cable, and Arcsoft/MGI's VideoWave IIISE editing software for less than $80. To bring conventional photography into your digital domain, an easy-to-use high-quality scanner, such as the new CanoScan D1250U2F ($199), makes it simple to digitize prints, slides, and 35mm negatives for presentation use.
Bringing It All Back Home
When planning and delivering your presentation, don't just think about what you want your audience to know about the subject, but also how you want them to feel about it, and most of all, what you want them to do with the information you are delivering.
Do you want your audience to assume "ownership" of the information and use it to motivate action from other people? If so, make it easy to re-purpose your presentation data with pre-burned CD-Rs and printed slide indexes. At least a half-dozen times in the past year, I've attended great presentations that had me excited enough to "spread the word." Maintaining momentum in these situations is important -- getting a copy of a presentation on the spot sure beats waiting for a disc to arrive in the mail or downloading a gigantic file on a slow-speed remote connection. At the very least, arm your presenters with laptops and CD-RW drives so that they can burn copies on the spot if required.
Portable, add-on disc burners, such as the Iomega Predator or Plextor PlexWriter, cost only about $200. A better solution is to churn out CD-R copies in advance of your presentation date with a fast duplicator from Primera, Microboards, or Addonics. Simple, single-disc, stand-alone duplicators start at around $500. Auto-feeding 50-disc units cost $1,500 to $3,000 and up, and some will even print professional-looking color labels directly onto the CD. Full-service disc duplication services, such as Disc Makers and L&M Optical Disc, can provide everything from fast CD duplication with custom color labels to a wide range of packaging and presentation products for handouts. The cost for 300 discs with 4-color covers is around $1,000. The entire process usually takes about a week, but faster turnaround is available for a higher price.
You can make your presentation go even further if you put the slide show and related information (such as spreadsheets or databases) on the CD-R and package it in a folder with slide indexes and printouts of contact lists, product/ service pricing, or other key data. Beautone's durable inexpensive filefolders with CD pockets are available for less than $1, and Esselte offers attractive Presentation Portfolio folders with CD and business card pockets for about $2. For more options, Staples and OfficeMax offer a wide range of 3-ring binder inserts from Avery and Esselte that are designed to hold both CDs and hard copy.
The Big Picture
With high-quality, ultra-portable projectors available for as little as $2,000, there is no good excuse for making an important presentation on a laptop LCD screen. It doesn't matter if you have the brightest Fujitsu or Sony 15-inch notebook screen -- if your audience really matters to you, you won't make them squint and lean over to view your slides. You shouldn't make your audience wonder why they are the ones watching a slide show on a laptop -- is it that you just couldn't afford the lease payment on a portable projector, or is it that they are just not important enough a client/partner to warrant the "good stuff"? Presenting on a laptop computer LCD screen can also divert attention from your personal message and presence, and it tends to turn you into a disembodied narrator.
Projecting Your Image
The new model LT158 projector from NEC is a good choice for traveling presenters who need high-resolution capabilities. This single-DLP projector weighs 4.9 lbs., offers native XGA resolution, and delivers 1,500 ANSI lumens of image brightness. The unit costs about $4,000 and features a 600:1 contrast ratio, a Compact-Flash slot for PC-less presentations, a DVI-I (digital video interface input), and a 1.2:1 optical zoom lens.
The very portable Sony VPL-CS4 strikes a good balance between cost, size, brightness, and convenience. This stylish model weighs 5.5 lbs., delivers 1,000 ANSI lumens, and offers native SVGA resolution with excellent color reproduction of both video and digital slides, thanks to its three LCD panels. The Sony VPL-CS4 projector sells for about $2,000 and has many useful features, including a credit card-size remote control and built-in protective lens cover. It's a good choice for a quick business trip or for a work-at-home presentation.
The tiny model TDP-P4 from Toshiba weighs in at just over 3 lbs. and measures only 2.6 x 9 x 7.6 inches. Using a single-DLP projection system, this native XGA unit delivers 1,100 ANSI lumens of brightness at a 400:1 contrast ratio. The sub-$4,500 TDP-P4 is also equipped with a 1.2:1 optical zoom and a wireless remote control.
The new generation of powerful, lightweight projectors is equally at home on the road or in the boardroom. They are easily transported, provide very bright projected images, and offer very good value/performance ratios. The cool-running Epson PowerLite 730C is a new 3-panel LCD projector weighing in at about 4.3 lbs., with a brightness level of 2,000 ANSI lumens. This native XGA unit sells for less than $4,000.
For more punch in a roadworthy projector, take a look at the 3M model 8765, a compact projector weighing 7 lbs. It delivers 2,500 ANSI lumens of native XGA resolution in an 11.7 x 3.0 x 8.98-inch package for under $7,000.
For a high level of picture quality and connectivity in a transportable unit, check out the Sony VPL-PX15. This 3-panel LCD projector provides 2,000 ANSI lumens of native XGA output and wired/wireless networking capability for peer-to-peer presentations. Using the projector's built-in browser, presenters can also surf the Internet or upload files to the projector's memory. The $8,000 VPL-PX15 projector weighs 11 lbs.
With both a projector and a portable screen, you can effectively control the presentation environment. The combination enables you to easily create a physical meeting setup that fits your presentation style and objectives. The portable RoadWarrior screens from Draper, for example, weigh approximately 17 to 20 lbs., and can be checked as airline baggage. The units provide a bright, true-color image, and are available in 60- or 80-inch diagonal sizes, with the smaller unit selling for about $500. Da-Lite sells similar high-quality portable units dubbed the InstaTheater. Da-Lite also offers the very handy Presenter -- a sub-$300, 40- or 50-inch diagonal tabletop screen that sets up in seconds and that provides an infinitely better projection surface than a typical meeting room wall. The 40-inch Presenter model weighs less than 5 lbs., and when folded into its integral case, is less than 30 inches long.
By combining proven interactive techniques with the latest technology, you can create and deliver winning presentations every time.
Sidebar: InfoComm 02: Audiovisual Systems Showcase
InfoComm 02 is the world's largest AV systems show. This year, Inc and Fast Company have created a two-day business management program tailored to AV communications and culminating in a keynote by Tom Peters.
Audiovisual communications systems provide growing businesses with a competitive advantage, and InfoComm is where the latest, most powerful solutions are introduced to users. More than 500 AV communications manufacturers and system integration companies will be on hand to demonstrate their products and services -- everything from IP videoconferencing and streaming media systems to the largest plasma screens and the lightest projectors. Come cele-brate the marriage of AV and IT! With more than 100 basic and advanced sessions on applications and technologies, InfoComm is the best place to learn about AV communications.
Conference June 8-14
Exhibition June 12-14
Sands Expo and Convention Center Las Vegas, NV
Find out more at www.infocomm.org, or call 1-800-659-7469.
Sidebar: Sony SuperLite(tm) Projectors
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Sony SuperLite Projectors are extremely small and lightweight and provide the very latest in projector technologies...from 3-panel LCD technology for sharp, clear images to Memory Stick® media for PC-less presentations. Choose from easy to carry, uniquely-styled projectors weighing in at only 4.6 lbs., and packed with state-of-the-art technology such as digital keystone correction, 4X digital zoom, and a built-in scan converter that accepts composite video, component video, and RGB video, as well as PC signals up to SXGA. Plus, each model features an advanced air discharge system for super quiet operation.
The SuperLite Series reflects Sony reliability and quality, with models starting at just $1,999 suggested list price.
For more information, visit www.sony.com/displaysystems, or call 1-800-472-SONY, ext. Inc.
Sony, SuperLite and Memory Stick are trademarks of Sony.
